Socialists don’t hate markets, they hate workers not having any power or democratic choice in how they interact in the market.
Workers owning the means of production just means the workers are doing the same work but they are in ownership of the factory and the profits. They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
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I, a socialist, hate markets. They are simplistic and functional artifacts of the available way to pass information.
So, you would never trade with someone else something you have for something they have? You want to be entirely self sufficient?
If this isn’t true, why do think markets serve no purpose?
Do you really think all exchange of goods is a market?
Yes. Do you not?
So Christmas gifts are a market?
Cool, what is your preferred replacement and does everyone in this thread agree? You have managed to continue criticism but not offer a replacement yet again.
The ole can have criticism without perfect solutions response. Cool, how useless and pointless of you.
I’m confused, isn’t criticism without alternatives itself useless and pointless?
No, it broadens and deepens understanding.
Alternatives come from that understanding. Criticism is the fundamental step towards alternatives.
No, it broadens and deepens understanding
How exactly do you come to that conclusion?
Edit: “Thing bad” doesn’t broaden or deepen anything. “Thing has specific shortcomings which aren’t present in specific alternative to thing” is a useful criticism. Criticism without alternatives is just called complaining.
Market forces on their own produce many if not all of the perverse incentives of capitalism. Only a centrally planned economy, built on a foundation of grassroots democracy, can hope to overcome those incentives by doing economic planning with an eye towards future sustainability and quality of life, rather than towards profitability.
Within the context of one person’s career, socialism on its own can do quite a bit to transform people’s relationship to their workplace. No longer would your job be at risk because you’ve all done too well and it’s to “cut labor costs” while profits soar. No longer would you be worried about automating away your job, instead you’d gladly automate your job away and then the whole organization could lower how much work needs to be done as things get more and more automated.
Democracy would massively improve work-life balance.
Of course this comes with problems, all of which exist in capitalism (how do we care for people outside of these organizations who won’t have access to work, for example). But if I had to choose between market socialism and capitalism, the choice is pretty clear, and it’s something much easier for liberals to stomach.
Not saying I’m in favor of it, but there’s still market socialism out there as a political stance
The idea of centrally planned economy ignores the lessons of the past. Bronze Age empires and recent examples all display universal inability to adjust to changes.
It’s the same magical thinking as the blind belief in market forces exhibits.
Priests of “invisible hand of market” ignore information exchange speed limits and market inertia, believing that markets will just magically fix everything in time for it to matter.
Preachers of central planning ignore information exchange speed limits and market inertia (and yes, there is a market, as long as there is goods and services exchange, however indirect) by believing they will have all the relevant information and the capacity to process it in time for it to matter.Neither is true. Neither school of thought even attempted to show itself to be true.
I think the better way would be a centrally planned economy for some goods (electricity, “normal” food, health, …) and something more “free” for the rest of the market. Bread has a marked price but a PS5 doesn’t.
They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
There is no rule that states they have to sell squat in a marketplace. They could, but they also couldn’t. That’s the whole point of the workers owning the means of production - the workers involved makes those deicisions, not a capitalist or bureaucratic parasite class.
Do they actually trust their coworkers to run the company without tanking it almost immediatly? Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks without fucking something up, let alone actually having input on how the business is run.
Some of the workers may be managerial. But the managerial workers don’t own a disproportionate amount of the company, and they’re not considered the “superior” of any other workers.
if you dont raise your children to be adults, they won’t act like adults when they grow up. A revolution would mean people learning entirely new skills, like making decisions in the workplace. Most workers have no agency, theyre treated like machines, so I dont expect people raised in that society to know how to run a completely different one from scratch. Revolution is a process, it has to be built. Keep shitting on your coworkers tho, im sure its a productive activity
They can’t even learn to do the tasks they are expected to do now. Even with frequent coaching. How the fuck can you expect them to learn to make business decisions?
You’ve clearly never worked close with anyone making business decisions in the real world.
I used to work for a food type company and the way they decided to import and sell stuff locally was if the board of directors (the CEO who inherited the company from daddy + his siblings) liked the item. They hired someone, my coworker, to actually run the market tests and everything and then promptly ignored any suggestion she had to make about the viability of this product on the local market, instead relegating her to a busser that was in charge of ordering the samples they decided they wanted.
I remember one item nobody liked (they would give us the remaining samples in the break room like some dogs getting the leftovers), but one of the siblings liked it and they got that close to putting it on the market because of it.
Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks
I guess you haven’t met many CEOs, then.
@lightnsfw @dingus
You really think the people currently running your company are any different from those other coworkers?I think they have education related to the running of a large company whereas most of my coworkers barely made it through their IT certs and have some of the stupidest takes regarding how things should be done I’ve ever heard in my life.
Education related to the exploitation of their workers
Ftfy
I trust my average coworker much more than the average CEO.
Highly depends on your coworkers. My current coworkers? Yeah they’re great, we have two electrical engineers on my team, buncha geniuses.
My last job? Oh man I wouldn’t trust those guys as far as I could throw em.
Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks without fucking something up
This is a problem with the company you work for, not your coworkers. I’m sure if they were paid more, were given more agency, and received better training, they’d be better elployees
No, they’re just idiots. Myself and others have had the same training and responsibilities and do fine. It’s not that difficult of a job.
i shall surely reap the rewards of working at the same level as these irredeemably dumb people. then i will prove my point online or something
How would that even work.
It’s very very easy to do something like have a capitalist system where business and the rich are taxed. But you aren’t on about that.
You could divide everything up today. But with change and new business ideas that system will never work. You think the people would want to invest in new automation, new ways of working, new industries. If it means growth and job losses? No never. Just look at the western car industry, or any big government owned industry. People don’t want change, even things like running a factory 24/7 instead of a nice 9-5 is difficult.
Then Japan’s comes along and does all this new stuff and puts most of the western workforce out of business.
If worker-owned workplaces still operate within a market, there will still be pressure to compete with other companies. People can still come up with new ideas to compete and change can still happen.
Under capitalism automation benefits the owners (on a small timescale, they worsen the totroptf) under socialism time saving just means the population has more time.
That is why workers currently push against automation under capitalism.
Not a market socialist though, just a socialist.
Are people investing in new automation currently because I’ve been using the same crappy tools for over 10 years now and they keep getting crappier.
Oh yeah we automate creative work now, the one thing that could still be a cheap hobby.
You literally left Reddit because of what capitalism did to it.
I don’t think anyone’s arguing that the US is a good example of a well balanced economy.
The “well-balanced” economies are still very dependent on US-lead imperialism, so that’s not a convincing counter.
Reddit would probably never have existed without capitalism…
Yes because people never communicated over the Internet before Glorious Visionary Entrepreneurs from the Great Private Sector took hold of it and gave us all these Valuable Products, they just sat on their ass wondering what to do with such technology like complete idiots.
I swear free market ideology is the dumbest shit you can possibly believe in, I’d sooner become a fucking Mormon.
How would you have communicated without someone owning a server and paying for it? Reddit and other centralized platforms emerged for some reason… You would have to literally make that illegal, i.e. make it illegal to host your own server and let users use it.
You can’t just imagine some fantasy utopia, and compare that to the current system.
How would you have communicated without someone owning a server and paying for it?
I’d probably have posted on one of the many voluntarily run forums that existed before reddit swallowed everything.
How would you have communicated without the telemasts installed and maintained by the state, which are now privatized and slowly falling apart?How would you have communicated without someone owning a server and paying for it?
You do realize the Internet first started being used by universities and the military, not the private sector, right? I see literally no reason why Internet infrastructure couldn’t be publicly owned. It could function pretty much like any other public utility.
And would it have grown into more than that? Into something that everyone, and not just military and scientists can use?
Why not?
Sorry I just don’t buy into the ideology that the free market has this kind of “magic sauce” that makes everything innovative and better.
The early Internet was filled of people doing all kinds of cool things for free just because it was interesting to do, the only thing the private sector did is provide the base infrastructure, this is something the state can easily do too. All kinds of communities, FOSS software and media popped up and none of them had VC funding or expected any money out of it.
It was only in mid-late 2000 that capital really sank its teeth into the Internet properly.
It did though? I don’t know what point you think you’re making but the internet did in fact grow from a technology limited to universities and the armed forces to a publicly accessible network, mostly off the back of publicly funded researchers and various techies that started their own neighborhood ISPs.
A world without capitalism or Reddit. The sheer thought warms my heart. 🥰
No, we left Reddit because of what Spez did to it.
Leadership is important when it impacts the bottom. Look at Twitter… That wasn’t capitalism, it was Elon Musk.
I’m not propping up capitalism, I’m just pointing out that bad leaders can easily ruin successful and/or good things.
No, we left Reddit because of what Spez did to it.
And why did he do that?
Yeah but capitalism also made reddit great, before making it terrible.
There’s a balance in there somewhere. What we got ain’t it tho.
There is no balance though, the shit-ification that happened to Reddit is a necessary function of capitalism. What we saw as Reddit at its best was, from a capitalist’s perspective, Reddit at its worst. I’m sure you’ve noticed a similar process taking place in lots of other areas as well.
What we saw as Reddit at its best was, from a capitalist’s perspective, Reddit at its worst.
And capitalists will allow this “at its worst” phase in order to capture the market, before squeezing it. This pattern is consistent in many industries.
Reddit was never great lmaoo
It was a pedo networking tool reknowned worldwide for it’s jailbate and non-consensual creepshots. These moderators received awards from admins. Then it got too much attention and got a PR workover, burning a woman CEO at the stake to satiate the gamer-fascists before becoming a bland Atlanticist CIA sockpuppet front of bland corporate posts.
At no point during this entire thing did it ever approach anything comparable to greatness
I meant the platform more than the company.
It’s my favorite format for social media… that’s why I’m on lemmy.
communism made lemmy so where does that leave us
I guess ‘a lot of free spare time in a socialized copitalism’ made lemmy.
activity = (forProfit) ? “Work” : “Hobby”
Are you saying you used Reddit for its jailbait etc subs? Cause Reddit was much more than it’s jailbait subs.
…
Do you have a point?
Are you really trying to do that?
It was good when it had only a few hundred thousand users, but obviously you weren’t there.
no that was when it was a jailbait/creepshots/libertarian/“hacker” site. Still not good. Still pedo and soy.
That’s precious…
I mean the stages of economic transition have been “fuedalism->capitalism-> socialism” as each one is progressively more efficient and supercedes the previous.
I may be wrong, but I don’t see socialism and capitalism as hard opposites.
I see capitalism and communism are like hard opposites with socialism somewhere in between.
Yes you are wrong.
Okay, well, I’ve studied everything from all sorts of marxist tendencies to syndicalism to anarchism, to classical economics, and I think you’re either using terms wrong or have the wrong idea. Can you define your terms or rephrase what you mean?
I apologize if this is too blunt.
So I understand total capitalism as an entirely market driven economy with no government influence
And total communism as an entirely planned and government prescribed economy
And socialism as some of the economy is market driven and some government planned.
Viewing it entirely in economics is incorrect. All of the above can be done under capitalism. The key difference is not what form of economics are employed but which class controls power and puts the resources of the state to use.
The capitalist state is a state where capital owners hold power and use that power to exploit more capital.
The socialist state is a transitionary state in which the workers have seized power and use the state to repress the bourgeoisie and put resources to their own use.
The communist state is what occurs when capitalism is entirely defeated, all nations are socialist, conflict is eliminated and material abundance is achieved, at which point states start to stop existing as the resources within them that are put towards repressing the bourgeoisie through violence are put towards other things when there is only 1 class in society.
no more half measures walter
Capitalism is the state controlled by the capital owners with the workers repressed.
Socialism is the state controlled by the workers with the capital owners repressed.
They are literally hard opposites. One is a bourgeoise-state and the other is a proletarian-state.
Capitalism is where everything is owned by an individual
Socialism is where only the means of production are owned by the state, but the individual still has private properties
Communism is where everything is owned by the state
This is not correct, I encourage you to do some more reading about how coats are made if you’d like to understand this better.
best way I’ve seen to tell someone to read capital lmao
You are impressingly wrong
Socialism is when the government does stuff, and the more stuff the government does, the more socialist it is. If it does a whole lotta stuff it’s communism <- This is you, but unironically. Educate yourself on the subject of which you claim knowledge.
:che-smile:
I learned that “capitalism” is an economic system, not a system of government.
So you could have a socialist state that funds essentials like healthcare and transportation through taxes with a market (capitalist) economy.
That’s not a socialist state. It’s a capitalist state with welfare. If the political structure of the state itself has not been reworked to put the workers in power what you’re describing is just a state where the bourgeoisie (who control power) have decided to do welfare, usually for their own benefit such as reducing revolutionary energy by providing the workers with concessions (the welfare state). That is social democracy.
You do not have socialism without overthrowing the hierarchy that places the bourgeoisie as the ruling class:
Capitalism = Capitalists in power. Proles repressed.
Socialism = Proletariat in power. Capitalists repressed.
Communism = No more classes, only 1 class because the bourgeoisie have been completely phased out.
This just made China’s system click in my mind. Thanks Awoo
All of this sounds at odds with representative democracy. What political system would you see working with socialism as you describe it?
Socialism is also an economic system.
I learned that “capitalism” is an economic system, not a system of government.
Consider for 3 seconds that what you “learned” about the world is a product of the system that produced it
Capitalism is a system of government, and in capitalist countries, they teach their citizens that capitalism is at at odds with the state and not working in conjunction with it
Amazed that I had to scroll down this far to read this. Capitalism does not magically create a fair society through the creation of value (which seems to be what its proponents keep saying: investors generating economic activity and wealth). But similarly you could have a socialist economic system, with no real democracy. Which, as we’ve seen, devolves into a corrupt oligarchy. We’ve seemingly lost this perspective in the decades since WWII, but a solid representative parliamentary democracy and separation of powers are the best way to create and maintain a fair society. It requires some other conditions too, like good education, free press, etc. but the core is a system where power is distributed and temporary, depending on democratic processes (elections). This democratic legitimacy is what we should be defending at all costs, imho. It’s not sexy, though.
As opposed to the corrupt oligarchies liberal states are… I guess you just don’t call it corruption when it’s working as intended.
Yeah but capitalism also made reddit great
Engineers and designers made it great. Reddit could very well exist without capitalism (see Lemmy). What fucked up Reddit was explicitly capitalist incentives.
Lemmy would not have existed without Reddit. Lemmy is a clone of reddit!
Plus reddit put all the work intro attracting users and communities in the first place, before driving them to places like lemmy.
You should probably read up on the original author of reddit, Aaron Schwartz, before claiming capitalism made it.
I know about Aaron Schwartz. His beliefs didn’t change the fact that Reddit had major VC backing and wouldn’t have existed without it.
It’s really not a hard concept to grasp.
reddit needed capital funding to get started in a capitalist economy
Bruh, reddit was created in search of capital. It grew and attracted communities in search of capital.
Reddit wouldn’t have existed otherwise.
I left Reddit because of short term decisions to squeeze money out of consumers to look good in an IPO, instead of having an actual long term thought.
You do realize that the incentives of capitalism necessitate that right?
You left reddit because of capitalism. What is an IPO? It is the launch of a business onto the public capital markets to release equity and to enrich its existing owners. What do all businesses on the markets operate on? Short term growth for the next financial quarter optimised to enrich their investors (shareholders) in the shortest amount of time possible.
Capitalism consistently destroys everything you enjoy and yet you defend it relentlessly while asking for long term thinking, which is not a feature of capitalism. When you wake up to this reality you might actually start to question “maybe the socialists are right about a few things” and spend some time with us learning what we actually believe.
But you know what happened after Reddit turned to crap? Because no one actually has to use Reddit, because Reddit is just a bunch of bored nerds and Reddit is just a bunch of forums, eventually someone realised: “wait a minute, I can code this in a few weeks and make it way less crappy than most social media. And maybe if I make it all open, a whole ecosystem of social networks can grow together”. And when Reddit turned to crap, “the invisible hand” acted and people slowly started to migrate over to lemmy and other social media and now reddit is just a bunch of bots
A few weeks?
Mate please check my profile. I have been here for 3 fucking years. Lemmy did not magically appear in a few weeks that is incredibly offensive to the sheer amount of work my comrades have put in to make it.
And calling their work “the invisible hand of the market” is also nonsensical. Because the forces driving its creation, and the rest of us communists that support it, are the destruction of the markets. There is not one single jot of profit motive involved in Lemmy. You seem to recognise some of the problems of capitalism but consistently come to incorrect conclusions about everything because you have spent no time whatsoever getting a real political education and understanding the forces at work.
And you fail to ask yourself what happens to your “market forces” alternative to reddit. In any scenario where the market is responsible for replacing reddit the market will also bring it back to exactly the same point of self-destruction through pursuit of capital. You will hurt yourself all over again.
So, capitalism?
Thank you for proving the theory.
Why’d you just repeat @Awoo@hexbear.nets statement?
That’s capitalists doing things because they exist in a capitalist society. You’re describing capitalism congratulations
Does Long therm thought make money in the short term?
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Wtf is an uncorrupt government?
All types of governance and economic systems are susceptible to despotism.
It takes a constantly educated and involved population to fight it.
Serious question. Is it possible to do this with very large populations? It seems like it might get inherently more complicated with several tiers of government (federal, state, county, city, etc…)
“Military Intelligence”
Two words combined that can’t make sense 🎵
The bias is justified. The left is correct. Markets don’t create wealth without necessarily simultaneously creating poverty
For more information, research “surplus army of labor”, “primitive accumulation”, and “accumulation by dispossession”.
Primitive accumulation is a bad term. It works if you’ve read the theory behind it, but otherwise it sounds like someone saving up a bunch of money then starting a successful business compared to what it is which was colonial genocide, enclosure of the commons, and mass starvation as people were ripped from agricultural labor and cast into the factories and mines to work for feudal lords turned industrial capitalists.
Nuh, uh. Markets controlled by Oligarchs who spend billions to erode social safety nets do. A market socialist economy with strong regulations and systems like a UBI wouldn’t create poverty, while still being a market (albeit a very different one to what we have today). Albeit I do think that for many things (like healthcare) having a market of any kind is just dumb.
Markets controlled by Oligarchs who spend billions to erode social safety nets do.
And where do these billionaires come from? Do they just spring out of the ground?
Oligarchs are a feature of capitalism, not a flaw.
A market with a UBI would simply increase rent by the UBI amount. Markets in capitalism exist to extract wealth, it is what they encourage. Thus they will support those that are best at extracting wealth, which leads to the creation of those billionaires.I said market socialist. In a market socialist economy there would be no billionaires. Also housing is an absolute necessity, which means it shouldn’t be governed by a market at all, no matter the economic system. Only things outside of staple foods, a roof over your head, utilities, drinking water, healthcare and other things absolutely necessary for your continued survival, can (not should) be governed by a market, and one that doesn’t funnel money upwards.
Capitalism in any form is absolutely horrible and should not exist.
Also, creating artificial demand should be banned.
There’s already one long-ass discussion about market socialism in this thread, so I’m not gonna start another, but glad to hear your perspective!
A market with a UBI would simply increase rent by the UBI amount
*Correction: an unregulated market with UBI would.
In a regulated market, those corporations can either follow the guidelines or fuck off the market.
Or they can enjoy the fact that they have regulatory capture and change the regulations, as has been seen historically.
For practical observance: Denmark pays a wage to university students. The function of this wage is to make sure the students can focus on their studies, instead of having to have a job that demands time from them, which would lower the quality of education.
Students also need housing, which the private sector provides in the form of “student housing”, which requires you to be a student in order to live there. This “student housing” has a rent that is usually, approximately right around the student wage - thus meaning the student needs to take a job in order to afford things such as “food” and “electricity”. This state of affairs occured despite regulations.Or just change the regulations
Well that’s just bullshit. Markets have brought more people out of poverty than anything.
Capitalism literally requires poverty to even function.
Lib - “Markets make everything cheaper, which is good.”
Leftist - “But if there is a labor market, won’t that make labor cheaper?”
Lib - “Yes, and that is good.”
Leftist - “How is that good?”
Lib - “It leads to more profits.”
Leftist - “But why is it good to have more profits?”
Lib - “Because a good country is when corporations make profits, and the more profits the corporations make, the gooder the country is.”
Love to spend insane amounts of resources on creating a phone that has the same tech and capabilities as all the other phones, but I can’t just get access to their research and they can’t just get access to mine.
Love to spend insane amount of time working up a cure to covid, but I can’t share my research with others and they can’t share it with me, yay this is awesome.
Love to spend insane amount of resources working out how to make people want to buy a sugary drink and then spend even more to make them want to buy my drink specifically.
Love to build empty houses and love to create 1.21 times more food than we need.
Love to do all this as the world is burning and people are starving.
Capitalism is the most efficient distribution of resourcesLeftist - “But if there is a labor market, won’t that make labor cheaper?”
A third person - "Not necessarily. If the demand for labor is bigger than the supply then markets make labor more expensive.
Leftist - " How is that possible? "
A third person - " There are various ways. Workers could start more cooperatives or invest their savings in new companies"
Leftist - “But why should I care about markets when it is easier to change the political system?”
A third person - “Is it easier?”
Damn this third person never heard about the reserve army of labor, the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, and like all of American history showing the hollowing out of working class power. JUST INVEST YOUR NON-EXISTENT SAVINGS INTO NEW COMPANIES ITS SO EASY. And please how will your worker coop survive in this hellscape with a bourgeois state over it? It will be outcompeted and swallowed immediately by corporations who have no qualms over worker or environmental rights. This isn’t china, Huawei (a worker coop) is villified and attacked at every turn here.
You know maybe you have a point, let’s be more like China.deleted by creator
Kid: “Mommy, what’s a strawman?”
Mother: “Take a look a this post here. See how they speak for both sides of the argument?”
Kid: “Yes, they’re arguing with themselves.”
Mother: “Exactly, and they can make their opponent say what they want.”
Kid: “That seems like an easy way to make your argument look good”
Mother: "Yes. It’s like fighting someone who can’t put up any resistance. They could be made of straw. A strawman. "
Kid: “Oh, I see.”
You didn’t engage with their argument, but good try nonetheless. It’s nice to see you cling to a fallacy rather than engage in good-faith discussion of an argument clearly illustrated for you to relate to.
There is no point in engaging with someone playing such games. They’re not going to be convinced when they’re already putting words in the opposition’s mouth.
They’re not going to be convinced
A good faith discussion is not about convincing another, but instead about having an open exchange of information.
They’re not going to be convinced when they’re already putting words in the opposition’s mouth.
They’re illustrating a point which you failed to engage with. In no way did it put words in your mouth. The fact that you choose to be insulted by the way they decided to illustrate that point rather than engage with them in good faith says a lot more about you.
To reiterate: You didn’t engage with their argument, but good try nonetheless. It’s nice to see you cling to a fallacy rather than engage in good-faith discussion of an argument clearly illustrated for you to relate to.
Do better.
No it hasn’t, socialist agitation in the teeth of capitalist opposition did that
Without it westerners would still be working 16 hour days seven days a week without any safety nets while dying of lead poisoning
Yeah, but please don’t say that too much, we don’t want to carry water for the CCP
*CPC
I don’t think you got the joke
Yeah it completely wooshed over my head, I thought you were serious
Anything?
Wrong, that would be China, under the direction of the CPC
Deng literally introduced market reforms to do so. This is not the own you think it is
Obviously it is a counterfactual but no serious leftist would say that China without market reforms wouldn’t have eradicated poverty, and moreover done it faster and more completely. The seeds of poverty alleviation were planted during the Maoist era; improvement in health, education improvement, and industrialization.
To corroborate your point you can just look at life expectancy in rural communities to see that it rose steadily throughout the Maoist period and then froze during the Dengist reforms
For the sake of simplicity, please enjoy the following meme:
Markets have brought more people out of poverty than anything.
Yes, just like the Irish people who were “helped” by the free market in the 1840s. Or the Indian people who were “helped” by the free market in the late 1800s. You might be interested in this book by the late, great Mike Davis which completely refutes your ideas with hard evidence that the free market can be used (and has been used) as a tool of genocide: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7859
You can’t be poor if you’re dead
The maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry
In that case, it was totally worth the deadliest famine in history. :-P
gottem
Is that another circle-jerk response? Say something useful (ie. that has significance outside of your circle), please.
Why should they? You do not engage with any of the responses of substance. When you choose not to engage in good-faith discussion, why you believe you deserve anything other than ridicule?
One famine one time is definitely preferable to the constant famines that exist under capitalism
If only the dead could argue their case…
I think it is important to take a critical look at past tragedies and mistakes, and work hard to avoid them in the future. Unfortunately I fear that many people would repeat them if given the opportunity and it served their idealogical and/or selfish interests, unless it was more convenient to do the right thing.
I think it is important to take a critical look at past tragedies
Those who care more about past tragedies than current tragedies don’t care at all. They’re just looking for some excuse to feel self-righteous.
Yeah I also think we should look at the past and the present in order to create a better future, which is why I say one famine once is better than constant famines like we have now. How many millions die of hunger each year? How many have died at the hands of capitalism? How many are dying? While we have food available. This isn’t even to count for the famines that were enacted on purpose like those the british did in Ireland and in India.
Meanwhile both the USSR and China managed to eliminate famine in regions that had been plagued by it since history could account for it. Were the countries perfect? Far from it. Pretending that they are somehow worse for eliminating famine while people are starving in countries with food on the shelves is ridiculous.
They eliminated famine in their own borders … after causing famine in their own borders. Congratulations, I guess?
International efforts to deliver food aid to those most in need are typically hampered by war, not by a lack of food. Real supply & demand issues caused by poor yields, conflicts & other supply chain disruptions often drive up prices which hits the poor the hardest, but we haven’t had a global food shortage in a long time.
Did you know that China is responsible for 75% of the global poverty reduction over the last 40 years?
Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below $1.90 per day – the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty– has fallen by close to 800 million. With this, China has contributed close to three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty. At China’s current national poverty line, the number of poor fell by 770 million over the same period.
This is the correct response. Practically all of global poverty reduction is being done by central planning, right now.
Do you know how China got such a huge poverty by the 1980s? Do you know how China got the wealth to start impacting it’s poverty?
Hint: the CCP took power in 1949. The Maoist era ended 30 years later, and massive economic liberalisation reforms started.
China today is a world trade powerhouse governed by an elite class (The CCP) with the proles given just enough to keep them where they are. It’s lifted them out of poverty, but it is the shining example of a totalitarian capitist state. If anybody thinks the proletariat have power in China, and it is therefore a socialist state…or that it’s classless with no elite and a communist state… well… You need to talk to some Chinese people.
You need to talk to some Chinese people.
You mean the Chinese people that overwhelmingly.support the CPC and their government? Ok
Yes, even those ones. I’ve met a few and the stories they tell send shivers down my spine. They think they’re telling me good thing about their country, and I listen respectfully. However, it sounds like being caged in a zoo. The keepers provide your essentials, but you have no freedom.
“Chinese people mostly like being animals”
…being treated like animals by their government, rather than the humans they are.
Glad to see Liberals busting out the good old “it’s not real socialism!!111!!” to cope with China’s success :’)
To paraphrase this cool guy named Ernesto: Its not our fault reality is marxist
That guy clearly never heard about the Pareto Principle.
E: fuck yeah, successfully triggered all the hexbear tankies. As fun as poking a wasp nest with a long stick. If only there was an online tankie bug spray equivalent…
If 20% of people own 80% of the land or wealth or whatever in a capitalist country then all that shows is that capitalism produces Pareto distributions. That does not mean Pareto distributions are some universal law of nature nor does it mean that non-capitalist systems are impossible.
The pareto principle was produced by guessing based on anecdotal observations it was never a serious thing
“Uncorupted Goverment” LoL when did that last happen under Capitalism?
I think you will find any place thats well moderated and cracks down on bigotry and hatespeech will skew left.
Weird how that is, huh?
You’ll be happy to know there’s a social media site just like lemmy run by capitalists. It has all the benefits that capitalist ownership provides.
That’s why I’m here. All the corporate owned social media are blatantly far-right fascists. Everywhere else is just thick with Nazis and racists.
I came here to escape from the far left and their control over Reddit. The fediverse(kbin in my case) allows me to block any political shit, which makes my browsing experience far nicer.
It can. In theory.
The theoretical part is the “uncorrupt government” you speak of.
The only way to keep a govt “uncorrupt” as you put it is under pain of literal death. And even then its not foolproof. Some will still be tempted.
If you want a govt that will serve the people while being as incorruptible as possible you have to choose politicians by lottery instead of election. They get called, go serve, then go back to the life they had before. Like 4 years of Jury Duty. Political graspers, climbers, those will always trend towards corruption. Like that old addage, anyone actively seeking political office is unfit to serve in that capacity as their motivations are suspect. Power, authority, etc. All that is only intensified in a system as inconceivably corrupt and broken as ours is.
A bit late to the party
Most would agree with your point - right up until you suggest that having an “uncorrupt government” is remotely possible.
Pretty much the same level of unrealistic idealism as folks who think it’s remotely possible to transition a state to communism without it turning into authoritarianism.
There, now I’ve pissed off everyone lol
Edit: Except, I guess for the hardcore capitalists, but I assume those guys are all too dumb to read, so no point, really 🤷
Luckily an entirely uncorrupt government is not necessary, since that is indeed quite unlikely to ever happen. It is enough to have low corruption, which is much more achievable.
Honestly at this point, even a low corruption government seems harder than balancing a boulder on a toothpick for the super powers of the world
Maybe so, but… That might be because China and America have too much international power. Power attracts the corrupt and global power attracts the most corrupt on the globe.
There’s a book about why power seems to attract this sort of people - can’t remember the name right now, might update later.
In short, it’s not power on its own, but rather the systems we built around and for power, making it unattractive for people we want to end up in power, while the people who we don’t want to end up in power pursue it regardless because they want power for the sake of it.
What I’m trying to say is, this is another issue that we can actually tackle and solve to a large degree. There’s hope!
Pretty much the same level of unrealistic idealism as folks who think it’s remotely possible to transition a state to communism without it turning into authoritarianism.
i wonder why this happens
The amount of left wing folks on some of the more extreme instances bashing the most left wing people in the American Democratic party because they’re not complete socialist idiologes is just wild. Like I want to see a major shift towards some form of democratic socialism in America and think we definitely need real change in that direction, but the hatred for elected officials closest to your views just because they aren’t extreme enough for you is silly.
I don’t understand why they feel the need to attack the left win branch of the DNC when Joe Manchin equists. When the Republican party exists. Focus efforts on some positive change and getting people you want in office instead of trying to tear down what should be an ally. Make the people you think aren’t extreme left enough the conservatives of a new wave. The defeatest attitude that just criticizes the closest thing they have to what they want is just silly.
Other than a violent change of the guard/revolution. It’s not going to be an instant process. You have to accept small progress where you can get it.
I know a lot of you are meming, but the amount of dogshit takes here is almost depressing.
There is no single answer to what a good government looks like, there is no “best one” and surely any single one that is based purely on ideals or idealized human behavior will fail, no matter how hard you believe in it.
One of the arguably most successful governments is the Chinese one and they are and were neither just, nor friendly, nor purely capitalist, communist or authoritarian. They are very China first and fuck everyone else and that works because of a lack of conscience and them adapting to everything without a second thought. Looking away and screwing people over as needed. You can be capitalist as long as it works for them. You can do whatever if it benefits them.
The US does this too, in different ways with similar effects.
the amount of dogshit takes here is depressing. This guy just praised the chinese government.
I wish it was just “towards the left”.
I’m very much on the left socially and left of center economically, but even I feel like every other comments section on here reads like some insane tankie commune.
It’s always a weird flavor, too. Like “I’m communist but only if I get all the wealth. Also I hate minorities but love the LGBT.”
For some reason it just makes me think of Dennis on 30 Rock. “Fiscally liberal, socially conservative.”
I’m communist but only if I get all the wealth. Also I hate minorities but love the LGBT
Where did you see that?
It’s a bit of hyperbole, but Lemmygrad and Hexbear aren’t far off.
A lot of their users believe that Russia is a communist state, not some crony capitalist society that would make Bezos blush. They also seem to really love Trump for some reason.
No where. “Centrists” love strawmen.
“Me saying that if I had a genie in a bottle I could marginally improve the world”
